EngenderHealth Renews Family Planning 2020 Commitment at Global Summit

EngenderHealth joined a global community of policymakers, donors, and advocates in London on July 11 who gathered at the much-anticipated Family Planning Summit for high-level discussions around reaching the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) goals. The summit, cohosted by the UK Department for International Development, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with FP2020, provided a platform for EngenderHealth and others to reenergize international commitment to rights-based family planning for girls and women worldwide.

July 11 marked five years since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, the global event that launched the FP2020 initiative. The summit underscored how a shifting political and funding landscape opens new space for others to lean in to support and protect programming and investments in family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Marking this milestone, EngenderHealth actively participated in various discussions that took place during the Summit to highlight progress toward expanding access to family planning and to help chart a path forward for accelerating progress.

In the spirit of commitment and action, EngenderHealth renewed its pledge to FP2020, speaking to the organization’s conviction that women and girls are empowered as rights holders and that governments and providers have a positive obligation as duty bearers to respect and fulfil their rights. This builds upon the organization’s prior FP2020 commitment, with a renewed focus on service delivery, youth, policy and advocacy, training, and contraceptive security, to empower women and girls as rights holders and to hold governments and providers accountable as duty bearers.

Read a blog post by Ulla E. Müller, EngenderHealth’s CEO and President, titled: We Need to Change the Way We Think About Reproductive Rights, timed to correspond with the Summit.

In an interview with FP Voices, Müller reflected that “Family planning has become more visible… and that’s to a great extent thanks to the FP2020 movement.”

Müller moderated a spotlight panel with experts from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, PACE/Population Services International, Marie Stopes International, and Pathfinder International on addressing provider bias in offering family planning services.

EngenderHealth stands with all FP2020 partners in advancing the reproductive health and rights agenda to ensure that girls and women have access to choices, regardless of where they live or what their cultural, geographical, financial constraints often try to dictate.

Addressing provider bias in family planning: A spotlight panel at the 2017 Family Planning Summit, London, UK